By Franz Schurmann

---

Prediction #60 for Tuesday, May 16, 2000

"It Looks Like The Taiwan Crisis Has Been Defused -- Forever."

Suddenly Beijing has taken the spotlight away from Taiwan president-elect Chen Shui-bian. It has told him: say whatever you want but we're not going to do anything until well into 2003.

Chen is one of the founders of Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic People's Party (DPP). Since then he has moved away from that stance to "neither independence nor reunification." But he named a vice-president, Annette Lü, who loudly proclaims the old DPP stance: "we Taiwanese must recognize that we are a sovereign state.

Beijing has been saying do so and we'll forcibly re-integrate Taiwan into our own sovereign Chinese state. That means a war that conceivably could draw in America. So worldwide eyes were being focused on Chen's inaugural address on May 20.

But on May 14 Beijing leaked to the global Sing Tao Daily the gist of its reunification schedule. The schedule will be announced during the tenth plenary session of China's National People's Congress (NPC). At that time it will be clear whether reunification will be gained through peace or war.

On the eve of the recent May 1 holiday President Jiang Zemin met with the top leaders to discuss reunification. In rank order those leaders were Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, rising star Hu Jintao, Generals Zhang Wannian and Chi Haotian and former foreign minister and now Taiwan reunification head Qian Qichen. The leaders then met with the entire Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Affairs Committee.

The message from these meetings says China's new proposal comes with a hundred percent consensus. That's not a message Chen Shui-bian can transmit in his inaugural address. Not only has the Nationalist (Kuomintang) splintered into factions but the DPP itself has become factionalized, as evident in the divergent views of Chen and Lü.

The Beijing proposal sets forth three scenarios for the coming three years. One is that Taiwan continues to avoid taking a position on the "One China" issue, secretly moves towards independence and seeks foreign military allies. That means war, the proposal says bluntly.

The second is one where Taiwan keeps finding excuses to avoid making a decision. One excuse is that Taiwan is democratic while China is not. Another is that there are serious ideological differences. In this case the 2003 NPC will make the decision whether reunification be brought about through peace or war.

The third scenario is that Taiwan accepts reunification. Then the proposal says the date 1911 will be set for the formal proclamation of reunion. It was in 1911 that the Manchu Dynasty was overthrown and the Chinese Republic proclaimed.

No secret was made of the fact that Beijing's offer was timed to come just before Chen Shui-bian's inaugural address.